One of the most influential religious poems of the English Middle Ages - a poem that addresses the nature of divine grace and spiritual redemption - is in the process of being electronically archived.
The project, spearheaded by English Prof. Hoyt N. Duggan, will allow scholars to study the work in unprecedented ways.
"Piers Plowman," written in the 14th century by the English deacon William Langland, was a major influence on later authors, including "Paradise Lost" author John Milton and "Pilgrim's Process" writer John Bunyan.
"It's some of the most sublime poetry in Middle English," Duggan said.
In an era before the advent of the printing press, the popular work was copied by hand many times, making no two copies exactly alike. Scribes often added to the original text, sometimes adding errors, which affected subsequent copies. Today, there are 50 to 60 copies of "Piers Plowman" from the Middle Ages.
The project will electronically archive all versions of these manuscripts with hyperlinks to annotations and scholarly commentary.
Computer networking has made the project uniquely collaborative, facilitating input from scholars all over the world.
Robert Adams, English professor at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, TX, said new technologies enable scholars to work together on the project. "It's really easy for us to do most of this work right from the [computer] terminal," Adams said.
The project is underwritten with grants from the IBM Corporation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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